


leashes

by lejf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, M/M, Sam leaving for Stanford argument, why are they so angry??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 23:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9464384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/pseuds/lejf
Summary: Sam wants Dean to follow him to Stanford. Dean defies.





	

When they were young, Dean had Sam on a leash. Where Dean set foot Sam would come pittering after, following guilelessly like a lost little boy in a large threatening world, eyes turned up towards Dean as if he were the sun or a signpost that pointed the way to salvation.

Not that it was a bad thing. That way Dean could keep him close, keep him safe, forever, preferably, if Dean hadn’t been the type of person not to work with forevers. Dean’s cards were dealt in places he never remembered, under streetlights and motel lampshades, by the side of a road, the back of a rattling train, under a bus shelter in the middle of the hell-pouring rain. Dean’s cards were temporary like the light that caught on the rear-view mirror in the flash of a glare.

Even Sam, apparently.

When they were young, Dean had Sam clinging to his imaginary coattails. He had Sam hanging onto every word, trusting every last thing: a small jerk of his head, a quirk of the lips, even a blink, so attuned to Dean that it should’ve been impossible. But Dean had heard that kids could be raised with birds and end up pecking the ground and chirping, or running with gazelles, or barking with dogs. Children were capable of anything. Even growing with and understanding monsters.

Now they were not so young, and Dean realised that Sam had never been on a leash. Sam had _chosen_ to stay by him. Dean should have been grateful while it lasted, because Sam was like the wind: coming and going and never to be caught. 

Stony silence and that bitchy expression that never failed to set Dean’s teeth on edge. “Why do we even hunt, Dean?”

Sam had not grown so bold to demand from John yet, only throwing minor defiances down at their father’s feet like clattering gauntlets of brass, so Dean did what John would’ve done and what Sam hated most. Ignored him. Stayed calm.

“Dean?”

“We’re good at it. We enjoy it more than most,” Dean said, wishing for some kind of beer. Instead he turned the television on, slouching back in a chair and seeing images flash across his eyes without really processing them.

“ _Enjoy_ it?” God, Sammy was just full of questions, wasn’t he? Dean changed the channel. “Dean, I couldn’t think of anything I’d hate more in my entire life!”

“What do you want me to say?” Dean said, tearing his eyes away from the screen, even though, really, he’d been watching Sam this whole time.

“Oh, I don’t know– maybe a good goddamn reason for me to stay!”

Dean had one. Just the one, and it ached in him terribly like a crane in a lake with the moon, a shock of red and black across his beak.

“If saving people isn’t enough for you...” Dean said instead, “if hunting the fuckers that go bump in the night isn’t enough; if avenging mom; if sitting,” — together — “in Baby and eating up the miles and livin’ a life of rock and roll, cradle the gun, shoot, dirt and whatever, the high of bein’ alive; if that’s not enough for you... go.”

Sam was very still. The television was still playing, and Dean hadn’t realised it before, but it was airing some sort of workplace, law firm drama.

Dean shook his head. “Sam, you _can_ give it up. Just remember what you’re leaving behind.”

“I just don’t get–” Sam’s words choked up on a sudden onslaught of tears. Before Dean knew it, he was moving to steady Sam who quavered in his arms like a cage about to burst. “You say that hunting’s so good, that we save so many lives, that we are so _kind,_ we save and save and save and we splash around the puddles that fill in Dad’s footsteps and follow his dream–” He tore himself out of Dean’s hold, the spitting image of desperation, and snarled, “ _so why did you have to destroy mine?!_ ”

“Sam–” But Sam was out of his grasp now.

“For _justice_? _Revenge_? ‘Cause I’m not seeing anything like justice around here, Dean! All I see are shotguns and alcohol and killing and everything I’ve ever wanted rushing past, faces that I forget and faces that I feel guilty for forgetting, every day running into the other because living here’s like a _cage!_ How could we ever stay here, Dean? Why the hell can’t we just leave!”

“So it isn’t,” Dean said, numbness crawling up through him. Sam was going. Sam was already gone. Dean had lost him. Dean had lost _Sam._ “It isn’t enough for you.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I’m going to Stanford. They accepted me last month. I’m leaving. Tonight.”

Blood flooded his ears. His fingers clenched around the remote and next thing he knew, it was flying for the wall, shattering into a thousand pieces. “Then _go!_ ” he roared. Stanford. Stanford. “ _God_ knows your dreams come before everybody else’s!”

“Before a negligent alcoholic bent on revenge, some- faux of a father?” Sam demanded, “Of course they fucking do, Dean!”

Everything pounded with red. “What am I– a blow-up doll painted like a soldier? A goddamn rusted signpost for you to follow? _Mine,_ you idiot!” he bellowed, “ _Mine!_ ” Here, on the fringes of illegal, was the only place Dean could have Sam all to himself. Here, Sam had no other friends, no other life but Dean, and it was a toxic wish, cruelty, but Dean wished it all the same. Dean's only place in the world was beside his brother, and he wished Sam felt the same. Sam didn't.

“Your _dream_ to fuck every girl you come across?” Sam’s voice ran like ice.

It was right there on the tip of his tongue, just beneath the surface — that if the crane took off all the water would be disturbed and it’d be seen, loud and clear. Dean was there, on the precipice.

And he backed off.

“Fuck, Sam,” he said, turning away and defeated, putting distance between them because Sam was dangerous, a temptation for all of mankind. “You want it so much? Just go.” Sam would leave, and maybe it’d be for the better. Dean’s ache would reside and he’d spent the rest of his life in mindlessness.

“I want you to come with me.”

“Fat chance in hell.”

“I’m _serious,_ Dean– we–”

“I’m dead serious too, Sammy.”

“We must mean more than that.” Something in Sam’s voice made Dean look. He was crying, had just started, the first tear spilling over. “We must mean more than this. How could we choose these over each other?”

“You’re telling me, Sam. You’re the one who wants to leave.” The words were harsh, and every bone in Dean’s body was screaming at him to comfort Sam, but he couldn’t. Not now.

Then Sam said, broken and small, like he was five again, and the nightmare creatures had been tearing him apart bone by bone all night until there was nothing left, “Please, Dean, please...”

Dean had memories of Sam’s plaintive begging all through his life — maybe just for an ice-cream cone, maybe just for a toy, maybe just to stay in town for a little bit longer, but it had never sounded like this. Dean turned to look, drawn inevitably by his one directive in life, and that was his downfall. Sam was begging him. Sammy needed his help. Sam was on the floor.

His slid to his knees faster than the human eye could blink, a part of him cursing for his weakness. “How could we have let all of this come between us?” Sam asked, clawing at him, pleading to be let in. “How? Dad, monsters, girls, school, our mom ... I hate all of it. It shouldn’t. None of it should, but it does.”

Sam was warmth and alive in Dean’s arms, fluffy hair brushing his shoulders, ear pressed against Dean’s suddenly speeding heartbeat, arms clutching Dean’s biceps like Dean was the only thing keeping him afloat. “You shouldn’t hate Mom, Sammy.”

“But I do,” dark and ashamedly, Sam confessed. “I’d hate the entire world because it keeps me from l– from you.”

Dean was no idiot. His heart beat double-time at Sam’s slip, the way Sam suddenly locked up in his hold, and his world spun.

“Sammy,” he murmured, pulling back, sliding a hand over Sam’s cheek. “Hey, Sammy, look at me.”

When Sam looked, Dean was close enough for their noses to brush and for his heart to lurch even faster in doubt. But then Sam’s eyes fluttered shut and Dean was pressing in to kiss him chastely, lips against lips, Sam’s eyelashes still wet. Sam’s lips were the softest he’d ever felt, and the sweetest.

Against his mouth, Sam whispered, “What was your dream?”

“You couldn’t make this any cheesier?” Dean said, “It wasn’t a dream. It was an impossibility.” He couldn’t say it aloud.

Sam may’ve been on a leash, but Dean was, too, like twin cranes treading water, crying their mating calls.

“Was it this?”

“Yeah,” Dean breathed. When he tried to disentangle, Sam clung on tighter. “Hey, Sammy– let me up– I gotta, you know.”

The pure shining admiration Sam directed at him nearly buckled his knees, again. But he had to get up. He had a bag to pack, and a brother to follow across the world.

**Author's Note:**

> leashes, leeches.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
